Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo

The music of Cuba is "a fundamental music of the New World" and has been deeply influential on the music of its northern neighbor, the United States. Addressing the neophyte, Sublette (a former coproducer of the public radio program Afropop Worldwide and cofounder of the record label Qbadisc) explores the history of Cuban music, which in his eyes cannot be disentangled from Cuban history generally. He characterizes the history of the music as one "of cultural collisions, of voluntary and …